


of the start and the end

by waldorph



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Multi, Post-Canon, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wants them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of the start and the end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atlanticslide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlanticslide/gifts).



Victory didn't feel like anything. She had never thought far enough to wonder what it would feel like to win. She had just known that they were dead, all of them, or just waiting to die, and that she had to fix that. It had been more than an obligation, a duty as the King's daughter. 

She was Snow White, and she was _meant_ to lead the Kingdom from darkness. 

And then there had been no time, in the rush to arm everyone and find horses and design a plan of attack.

But it felt hollow, watching the Queen cry her way into death. She had been so afraid to die, and though Snow White could feel the land gasping within her, straining towards its freedom and known that the Queen had to die…she still grieved. They were bound, she and Ravenna. Fairest blood united them, stayed Ravenna's hand when she should have killed Snow White when she was a child, and fairest blood would help Snow White to heal the wounds of the Kingdom. 

"Be at peace," she whispered, taking Ravenna's hand in hers. "Find comfort in death where there was none in life." 

She stood, then, and turned. The huntsman was watching her, and he raised his eyebrows at her. "Alright?"

"Yes," she said, and then, "William." 

William was on his back, gasping for breath. The huntsman cut the armor away from him, bent as it was there would be no saving it. Blood flowed at the decrease in pressure, and the huntsman swore, pressing his big hands down to staunch it. 

"William," she said, and thought she could not lose him. Not yet, not when she had only just gotten him back. 

"Hold here," the huntsman told her, pressing her hands to one of the cuts. "Press until you feel his insides." 

She could hear her heart pounding in her head, blood rushing, all of her adrenaline back, and she felt strong. Infinitely, unbearably powerful, and all of it was rushing from her into William.

"Lass. Lass. _Snow White_ ," the huntsman was saying, and she blinked at him, startled. "I think he's fine," he said, and she looked down at William, who wasn't bleeding. When she lifted her hands his skin was unbroken, not even a scratch. 

She looked at William, who was watching her warily, and then at the huntsman, who looked exasperated more than anything; as though he knew this was just another thing she was doing to make his life difficult. She was unspeakably grateful to him. 

"Get out of your armor, then," he told her. "You'll start to smell." 

She made a face at him but did, carefully stripping the pieces off. It was heavy, though she only noticed it as she removed it. It had been so long since she had been outside, and in the weeks since her escape she had run, swam in the ocean, trekked through the Dark Forest, died, and then led an army and fought for her life. 

She was tired. 

Still, there wasn't time to sit, and so she turned around to find the huntsman easing William into a stand, pressing his sword into his hand. It was oddly gentle, and she thought that perhaps this was the only way the huntsman could show compassion. 

The business of clearing Ravenna from everyone's life was long and arduous. Everyone was shocked to find it was spring, that the earth was blooming anew. Every morning there were more flowers sprouting, more crops taking hold, and the world went from browns and blacks to warm stone and brilliant colors. Wracking illnesses were vanishing, and those who had been on death's door suddenly found themselves whole and well. 

They all rose with the sun and burned candles and torches into the night, rebuilding walls and homes and fences in the outer city. The castle was being scrubbed clean and smelled of vinegar, for the most part. People were already making pilgrimages to see their Princess. To see Snow White the Fair.

They burned Ravenna's body on the second day. The first everything was still too wet to burn, and everyone had been afraid that it might not be true: that she might claw her way out of death. But by sunset on the second day it seemed more real, and Beith and the huntsman had vanished and then come back to say there was a pyre, and they were gonna watch her burn and Gort said maybe he would sing a song and then they were all heading down to the beach, to sit in sand or on driftwood, watching and feeling like they could all breathe again. 

"By fairest blood it is done," she murmured. The huntsman looked down at her, a sideways glance that meant he was paying her far more attention than he wanted to seem he was. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared forward. She didn't have any explanation for the way that phrase was stuck in her head like a piece of meat caught between two teeth. She couldn't help worrying at it. 

She didn't know what "fairest blood" meant. It irked, because it clearly had meaning, she was just ignorant. She was ignorant of so much, and though she knew it was because of her internment, through no fault of her own, she didn't like it.

"Smells like rain's coming," Beith grunted, hitting the huntsman's thigh and then inhaled loudly through his nose. "And roast pork." 

"You're disgusting, Beith," the huntsman informed him, and Beith laughed darkly, pleased with his own joke.

"You did that," Muir said, and she looked at him. 

"I didn't do anything," she said, and then thought that she couldn't say that without knowing what he was talking about. "Well I—what did I do?" 

"It's an improper term," Muir mused, his blind eyes turned towards the fire, his face serene. She wondered if anything bothered Muir, or if the slaughter of their people had put him into this state. If he was calm so he would stay alive. "'Fairest blood.' They really ought to call it fairy blood."

She stared at him, stomach clenching. "What?"

"Well, that's what it is."

"Fairies," the huntsman said, dubious, holding his thumb and forefinger apart, and she remembered the little fairies they'd seen in Sanctuary. 

"Not them," Muir said. "They're sprites, not like the Fairies used to be—Sanctuary's all that's left of that realm, they've long since departed. There was one left, a changeling, I was a boy when I last saw her."

"What happened to her?" Snow White asked. 

"I don't know, Princess," he said. 

Snow White looked up at the stars, then squinted. Above Ravenna's pyre circled two magpies, lazily chasing each other around and around.

* * *

It was a difficult adjustment. She had been alone for so long in that cell, and since escaping she hadn't passed a single night by herself, and though she could remember a time when people had wanted to talk to her, or listen to her, and had always been around, it had been a long time. Now, when she was surrounded by people, she found herself looking for the huntsman.

She also hadn't slept on her own since her escape, and for now, at least, no one seemed to mind that the huntsman was sleeping in a chair in the room she had taken as her own (she had a room, she remembered, but she couldn't find it. She wasn't sure she wanted to).

"What did she call you?" she asked on the third morning when he woke her, running a hand through her hair. She would be crowned Queen today: it seemed too soon and too long coming all at once. 

There would be breakfast waiting, because Ravenna had kept a household that had continued on in her absence. Snow White had been neatly substituted in for Ravenna. When she woke there was someone there to help her dress and to brush her hair, and then a breakfast of eggs and bread was brought up, and both of the servants stood at silent attention while she ate. She had tried to talk to them, but they just dropped their eyes and looked panicked, and she had stopped. 

Still, her bed was always made and her room cleared, anything put out of place tidied in hastily, and they moved around her in silence, flinching as though she was going to raise a hand to them at any moment. Muir said that they would learn that she wasn't Ravenna in time, and that she had to be patient. So she was doing her best to endure it, to pick up after herself and be grateful, trying to remember how her mother was with the servants. 

"What did who call me?" the huntsman asked, helping her stand up. 

"Your wife," she said, carefully not making eye contact. He had loved her so much, and his grief was so present. It was like her father's grief, though the huntsman's only threatened himself, not everyone and everything. "You must have a name: what did she call you?"

She thought he would refuse, but then he exhaled. "Eric," he said, finally. "She called me 'Eric.'"

He opened the door and she paused, looking up at him.

"May I call you that?" she asked.

"Aye," he agreed, and the red in her blood surged in delighted victory: she had his name.

She was noticing it more and more, though maybe it was because Muir had pointed it out. She could feel it, the land coming alive. The birds seemed to talk, and the wind laughed with her and the sea murmured and all of it, all of it was in her. 

Outside her window flowers were blooming on a vine that looked ancient, but hadn't been there yesterday. 

She couldn't _do_ magic, but that didn't mean she _wasn't_ magic. 

William was waiting for them with a smile for Eric and a bow for her. William was still unfamiliar, but they were, she thought, slowly relearning each other. It was easier with Eric there, somehow, and she was glad that they were comfortable with each other. Eric was…well. Eric and Beith had a complicated, somewhat violently fond relationship. William seemed to have knights but no friends. William was the only person she'd seen who could so quickly pull a smile from Eric, grudgingly given but given nonetheless. 

"Are you alright?" William asked her. Ravenna was seven days dead, and the land was blooming, lush and hopeful. The birds were singing in the skies, no longer screaming out their agony, their mourning songs. He put a cup of hot chocolate by her hand as they sat at a the table in the dining hall. In hours it would be full of people celebrating and feasting and dancing, and her stomach flipped at the thought. 

"What if I trip and fall before I make it to the throne?" she asked him.

"You won't fall," he said, sitting beside her and looking at her earnestly. He had such beautiful eyes, and he had grown up so well. She wanted another try at that kiss. She thought it would be sweet like an apple, with just a hint of bite. 

"Did they—did you all—really think I was dead?" she asked, because she'd been locked away for many years, but that didn't make her a fool. She knew that Duke Hammond had thought to be the King, and that William was raised to be the Kingdom's Prince. She wondered if that had always been the case: if their parents had allowed them to run together so freely because they were betrothed. 

"Yes," he said, tearing at his bread, face clouding. "We were told everyone in the palace died that night. There were no survivors—never any word. Not for eleven years. No one ever left the city, we thought—we thought maybe the whole place was a lost cause."

"Eleven years," she repeated, softly. She had been locked away more than half of her life. It seemed impossible. "You were to be King," she said.

"I would rather have a Queen," he said, and brought her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles. 

She thought it must make the Duke nervous: to put another Queen on the throne on the heels of one who had been so disastrous. 

"I can do this," she told him, though her chest felt like it might burst. 

"I know," he said, and smiled.

She just needed the crown atop her head, and then she would feel better.

Eric threw himself into the chair on her other side. "Those bloody women are here," he said. She frowned at him, at the red flare of color under his eye. The Marsh Women, then. She was glad, she hoped Anna was one of them: she could use her steadiness. Anna had seemed so implacable, even as her world burned around her. 

"They're charming as ever," he muttered, reaching across her to steal some of William's bread. "Witches, the lot of them." 

"They aren't," she said, and touched his cheek, watching the hot bloom of color fade. 

"Stop doing that," he said, gruff and contrary. 

"No," she replied, and got up to receive them. They were all there, Anna, with Lily beside her, and Olive and Moira and Beth—all of them with their beautiful scarred faces and alive. 

"I have a new doll," Lily told Snow White, looking down at it seriously. "It has a face, but I don't like it very much."

"I can't sew," Snow White apologized, and Anna laughed softly. 

"The Queen is too busy to play with dolls," she said, her dark-rimmed eyes knowing. "Are you not, your Majesty?" 

"I seem to be," Snow White agreed. "Anna, you remember Eric, but this is my friend, William. He's Duke Hammond's son." 

Anna inclined her head gracefully to both of them, and then offered Snow White her arm. The woman wasn't old enough to be her mother, but there was something solid about her, deep as the oceans and perhaps just as terrible. Snow White took her arm and tried not to hold too tight.

"You made your sacrifice," Anna observed, her thumbs tracing Snow White's cheekbones. 

"I died," Snow White said, because she wasn't certain that that _was_ her sacrifice. She understood that the kingdom grew strong as she grew strong: that her blood flowed through the land as it flowed through her, though the "how" of it all eluded her. 

"That," Anna allowed, "and you gave up your right as Fairest. You could have all of the kingdoms the Queen never had, consume them all."

"I couldn't," Snow White disagreed, pulling back, because the thought of it made her sick.

"And that," Anna said, smiling, "is why you are our hope. Queen Snow White the Pure."

* * *

The coronation was pageantry, orchestrated by the Duke. Her feet remembered it, though, and her voice. The crown fit on her head, and she felt it, the sudden breath of life flowing from her into the land. She could feel the pull of the ocean and each blade of grass as it grew. She was every tree, and she was all of the crops and she was the Dark Forest and Sanctuary, and she was the birds singing in the warm, warm sunlight. She was the wind and the rain and the sun and the moon and it was too much, different from how it had felt. She would crumble under the weight of this, or fly apart in a million directions. 

She felt as though she was going to burst with it, couldn't breath for it, and then she saw him. Eric, with his hair pulled back, not bothering to dress for the occasion. And he stood, and he looked at her and suddenly she could breathe. Her blood roared in her veins, and she glanced at William, who was beaming at her, and then back to Eric, and then over her assembled court.

She could do this. 

She _would_ do this.

* * *

The coronation marked a turning point. There was a privy council to arrange, and now that she was Queen she had to act the part. Which meant learning to sleep alone. 

She dreamed that ravens were pecking out her eyes, that Ravenna's fingers were deep in her chest, seeking but not finding her heart. 

She woke and thought she could see the Queen in the shadows, staring at her. Sometimes she was all in black, elegant and terrible and wrathful, and sometimes she was as she must have been, with golden hair spilling over her shoulders, frightened and alone and beautiful. 

She felt sorry for the Queen. She was so wretched, so wounded. She would never be able to know, because anyone who might know has long since died, but she thought that once, long ago, Ravenna must have been a beautiful girl, whose mother never told her that her beauty could be anything other than in her blood; in her face. 

Still, the specter never failed to frighten her, to send her up against the headboard and shaking with terror.

Between one blink and the next she would be gone, but Snow White had begun to ask her fire always be fed-the shadows were fewer that way, and someone always had to come into the room to build it up again. 

It helped. It made her feel less alone.

She thought she recognized the girl who came in after midnight—she had red hair and a kind face. 

"Greta?" she asked. She frowned and touched her throat, because it felt torn: was she screaming in her sleep, now? Still, she could be wrong about the girl—Greta had probably been killed by Ravenna, this girl probably just bore a passing resemblance to her.

"I didn't think you'd remember," the girl said, smiling. And it was her, though she looked different when she wasn't weeping and fearing for her life (but, Snow White imagined they all looked different).

"Of course," Snow White said. "Of course I remember, I just thought you'd gone home." 

"I have nowhere to return to," Greta said, and her smile dimmed a little.

"Oh—I'm sorry. I'd forgotten," she said, feeling terrible and awkward. Greta had said that all the girls in her village had been taken and that she'd been running to Duke Hammond's--of course she had nowhere to go to. Snow White was no good at this—William could fill her silences and Eric was as bad as she was at talking, but with other people she was just...bad. "Will you—sit?"

Greta did, folding herself gracefully into a high-backed chair. Her slender fingers rested lightly on the parchment on the table, flitting from one to the next. 

"I seem to have no head for that," Snow White admitted. The reading was thick and hard, all technical language that tripped her up. "Though I cannot bear to take anyone's word for it, so I give myself headaches trying to understand it all."

"Not even the Duke's son's word is good enough?" Greta asked, sly and smiling. 

"Not even William's," Snow White said, her lips twitching in answer. "Would you stay for a while—would you mind?"

Greta smiled brightly. "No," she laughed. "I wouldn't mind." 

Snow White had never had a friend other than William. She had tried with the girls the Queen brought to the tower, but most of them had been too frightened and taken too quickly. Greta had been one of only two of the Queen's captive girls to have her wits about her. The first had been years ago. Snow White had probably been twelve, she thought, on the cusp of womanhood. The young woman had been older than she was—perhaps twenty. All of a sudden the Queen's brother had been visiting more often, hovering outside of Snow White's cell and staring at her. She had known that she was afraid, but hadn't know what he wanted from her. 

"He wants you," the young woman had said, her voice full of disgust. "He wants all of us, but you're just a girl, and he still wants you."

"Wants me to what?" Snow White had asked. 

"To bed," the young woman had said, and then, seeing that Snow White didn't understand, had explained how a man and a woman laid together--how it ought to be and how it could be, when a man took. She spoke of her husband, gentle and sad.

"Don't let him," the young woman said, her hands--cut up and bruised--wrapping around the bars of her cell. Snow White wondered why the Queen wanted her, wanted all of the girls Snow White had seen over the years. This one was the only one who looked as though she had fought back. "Don't let him get close to you, Princess. You scratch out his eyes and bite. Don't let him have any part of you."

The Queen had taken the young woman not long after, and she, like so many before, had not returned. Sometimes Snow White told herself that the Queen kept them as attendants, the way Snow White's mother had kept Ladies in Waiting, but she could hear them screaming, and had know they were dead. 

She wondered, now, knowing Eric and knowing the story of Sara, if that had been her. She liked to think she'd known Sara, even so briefly. 

"How did you survive?" she asked Greta, and Greta stilled, the color in her cheeks fading away. 

"She only took—she said she was saving some for later," Greta said. "'Later' never came, and I suppose when you killed her, I got my life back."

"I need a Lady in Waiting," Snow White said, too loud and awkward, and she winced. "I—my mother kept them, they were her friends, and I can remember them laughing. Would you—I'd like you to stay." 

Greta looked at her, her eyes wide and her face pale under her freckles. Snow White watched her and worried she'd said the wrong thing—she was sometimes so terrible at this. 

"Yes," Greta said. "Yes. I would like that very much."

"Good," Snow White exhaled in relief, beaming at her. Greta smiled back, bright and happy.

* * *

William blinked when Greta followed Snow White into the council room, but he got over it quickly. "I want to put Anna, Olive, and Rita in the privy council," she said. "As well as Muir and his son." 

William looked at her. "You do." 

"Yes," she said. William held her gaze, and then glanced at the door to the room, which his father was inevitably going to burst through. She watched him, willed him to help her, to do this with her. 

"Well," he said, slowly, "I can't think of any lawful why they should be barred, except for precedent." 

"You'll help?"

"I'll help. Eric is going to love this," he added, and she bit her lips against her smile: Eric refused to be a member of the council, but he was more than happy to sit in on the meetings. 

The Duke's disliked Eric's presence. He always seemed to be watching him, his lips tightening. All of the older lords made no secret of their disdain for him, muttering that he was a peasant, and had no place in this room. Even worse, of course, was that she indulged Eric. She allowed him to have too little respect for her station, and by indulging him, she showed her lack of respect for it. In their eyes, Eric's presence was a display of weakness.

Which meant that they were going to be extremely displeased with what she was about to do. 

She waited until they were all assembled, and then said, steadily, "I am going to invite the Ladies Anna, Olive and Rita on the council, as well as Muir and his son, Quert."

Anna was a lady of the court, during King Magnus' reign. "Not a true lady," she had explained. "I had no lands, and I was a second daughter, even more worthless than the first," she laughed. She laughed so easily, a small quiet thing of grace in the midst of so much despair. "But my husband was a knight, and a champion, and a Baron. And second daughters have little else to occupy their time than to learn all the workings of a court."

"You cannot put a woman in the council," Duke Hammond told her, and turned back to Lord Alpervorth, who was discussing taxes. 

"Will," Eric grunted from the corner where he was slouched in a chair, for all the world looking a bored teenager. He kicked William in the shin when William didn't look up, and Snow White frowned over at them both, curious. Eric never spoke during council meetings, though she didn't know why he came: he wasn't _on_ the council, but it seemed no one wanted to tell him to leave. 

"What?" William demanded, leaning to rub his shin and glare. They were easy together, in a way that Eric wasn't with anyone else, not even her. It made her a little jealous, she could admit it.

"You know your father was the king? Coulda sworn we had a Queen, but me, I'm just a foot soldier and a drunk and a huntsman." 

William swore at him, and she was astonished to hear it, though Eric clearly wasn't.

"You'll mind your place," Duke Hammond snapped at Eric.

"And you'll mind yours," William snapped back, suddenly on his feet. "If the Queen wants to have women on her council, who are you to stop it?"

"I am the man trying to keep that pretty head atop her shoulders," the Duke hissed.

"Did you know you were missing a neck?" Eric asked her, and Snow White threw him a dirty look. "Just straight from head to shoulders," he continued, unrepentant. 

"Eric," William muttered as his father snarled,

_"Huntsman."_

"Duke Hammond," she interrupted. "I appreciate, as always, your advice, but in this matter my mind is quite made up. It is important that a Queen's privy council offer her advice with many voices."

He scoffed, and she felt her blood surge, heard the beating wings of two mockingbirds outside the window. "One wonders if my father had had anyone on his council to offer him caution if he might not have married Ravenna so hastily. If he had waited but a month, her witchcraft might not have sunk so deeply into our lands, and we might have been spared the last decade." 

The silence in the room was absolute and ringing. The sun was hidden suddenly by an advent of clouds, and some of the lords were muttering nervously.

"We will, of course, do as the Queen commands," Duke Hammond acquiesced smoothly, bowing. Eric's hand was casually wrapped around the knife in his belt, and violence lingered in the air.. 

"Grain storage is going to be an issue in the western districts," William said. "They've been hit with uncommon rain, which is excellent as they were on the verge of a draught, but it's a tricky time of year." 

The tension didn't bleed out, but it did get pushed down while the council did what it is meant to. She could feel Duke Hammond's gaze on her, and she ignored him in favor of watching William. She would be damned if she was going to let the devil in the door. Eric shifted, and she glanced at him, her stomach tight. She did want Anna on the council, and Muir. She wanted all of her people to advise her, and it would make the kingdom far more prosperous.

But she also wanted to be a Queen men like Eric would follow. Because they were the ones who had lost all hope, the ones who had stopped looking to find it, and he blamed her father and perhaps he blamed him rightly. She wasn't her father, and she was making a kingdom they could all live in. 

Eric grinned at her, and then began cleaning his fingernails with his knife, and she felt a warmth low in her belly.

* * *

As spring bloomed into summer, her nightmares got worse. She saw her flesh rotting like an apple. She had hot, sticky dreams of bedding someone (she could not see his face), and then watching the kingdom burn and break apart like ash. A kiss brought the Black Forest to the kingdom's doorstep, to go further resulted in ruination. 

They called her "The Pure," "The White Queen," "The Snow Queen." Ambassadors from neighboring kingdoms came to pay tribute and extolled her virtue. 

She wasn't stupid, and if she had been ignorant Anna would have cured her of it. 

"What if I can't take a husband?" she asks Greta one night, stepping out of her bath. "What if…the moment I give myself to someone, I become like her?"

"You'll never be like her," Greta says, unusually fierce, roughly toweling water from Snow White's skin.

"But fairest blood—we were so alike, what if—what if I do lay with a man and destroy the kingdom?" 

"Then," Greta said, biting her lip and thinking. "Well, then the huntsman will kill you." 

Snow White stared at her, stunned. It was, of course, true. He wouldn't hesitate, and neither would Anna. William would—William would stay his hand and try to save her, but she could trust Eric to save all of them if William failed. 

She remembered dying: being cradled in William's arms while Eric had tried to find something, anything that would save her. She wondered if together they would manage the thing.

"You should probably wait until you're married, though," Greta added. 

Snow White didn't snort, but it was a very close thing. 

The nightmares persisted, though. She wrought destruction and ruin, the Dark Forest sprawling out to take over the entirety of the kingdom as she laughed and felt more powerful than ever.

She stood in front of a golden mirror in one of them, and thought that her soul had been a simple price for this power. 

She woke up with a start and ran out of her room, bursting into Eric's. He was up with a knife raised in front of him before his eyes were even open. She spared a moment to be fond.

"The mirror," she said. "From Ravenna's quarters—what did we do with it?"

He put his knife back under his pillow and rubbed a hand across his face. She would not admit that she was relieved to find him alone, and would neither admit that she was admiring the way his skin looked in the moonlight.

"Will'd know," he grunted, getting out of bed. His eyes flicked up and down her body—she was in a shift, lightweight and very probably see-through. "Let's fetch him." 

William was not impressed to be woken, and rolled over three times before Eric hauled him out of bed. 

"Why do you want it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes and shoving Eric away from him.

"It's giving me nightmares," she said. "I think--I think it's trying to control me. I think it wants my soul."

"Can we not have peace?" William muttered. "It's in the north towers—they didn't know what else to do with it." 

In the rush to care for those who were dying and the coronation, it had been forgotten there; though perhaps that was through its own design.

They waited for William to put on a shirt, and he glanced at them both and flushed, faintly, and muttered something about a lack of modesty. It was in the fourth room they looked into, pristine as though no dust dared collect on it. 

"I don't think we should do this," William said, eyeing it. Snow White stepped forward. It was curiously alive, and terrible. It _felt_ like her nightmares. It felt like it was watching her.

 _What does he know?_ the mirror asked her, and she startled badly. _Petty little princeling, he wants your throne. He will take your heart and then your Kingdom, and when your beauty is spent he will take another to his bed._

"Is it talking to you?" Eric asked her, dubious. William pulled his sword out, holding it angled and at the ready, but she looked at Eric. 

"Yes," she said. "I think…yes." 

"We should destroy it, then," William said. "What if it was the root of the Queen's madness?"

"That kind of crazy is bred," Eric muttered. 

_Are you certain,_ the mirror persisted, _that you're the fairest? Perhaps there's another, waiting to plunge her knife into your belly._

"You cannot have my soul," she told the mirror, and it felt blasphemous to say it, the air in the room thickening as though to catch her words before they left her lips. "You cannot have my blood."

There was a terrible vibrating noise, like the building pressure of a drum struck by dozens and dozens of fingers, drawing so tight it must break.

"Out! Go, get out!" Eric shouted, shoving her towards the door and they ran as the golden mirror tore itself to pieces, flinging itself and gilding the room. 

Then, abruptly, everything went silent.

"You made it angry," William said, and Snow White laughed, couldn't help the sound that was punched out of her, because it was absurd. Absurd that she had done battle with the Raven Queen and now had fought of a mirror that wanted her blood, her soul. She wondered if she needed to worry about anything else in this castle—if any of the inanimate objects were going to take up arms against her. 

William, being the closest to the mirror, was covered in gold dust. He looked like a statue, and displeased to be one. "I need a bath," he said. 

"You look good in gold," Eric told him, tugging on a lock of William's hair. William punched him in the arm. "Perhaps you shouldn't be so hasty." 

"Be on your guard," Snow White warned William, grinning. "He is covetous of gold." 

The look that passed between them was hot and private, and she turned away. They weren't hers to have, neither of them. Not really.

* * *

She tried not to think about it. Everyone knew that the Queen's lusts killed those who loved her, and so much of Snow White's time was occupied being everything Ravenna wasn't. Ravenna had relied on her brother: Snow White relied on a privy council (of that she only _listened_ to three members, but as one of them was a dwarf and one of them was a woman, she felt she was doing better than Ravenna). Ravenna dressed in black and steel: Snow White wore as many colors as she could find. Ravenna had worn her hair up in intricate coiffures: Snow White wore hers loose. They were so superficial, these things that she did, but she thought they helped. 

But sometimes, when she was alone, she would burn. She would think of the curve of William's smile, of his big hands, and wonder how they would feel against her skin. Would he blush, or would he come eagerly to her? She wanted him so much, in the dark privacy of her room, that it felt all-consuming. Though as her imaginings grew more fervid, William's face often blurred into Eric's, and that, she knew, would never be borne.

She might have one, or the other, but she would not be permitted to have both. As summer faded she tried to test herself. She loved Eric, she knew she did. He was true and she was consumed by it—the thought of him touching someone else physically pained her, and she could admit that when she saw him with William she turned away not out of propriety but because she could not stand to see them have what she could not. 

Muir told her she was the land, and if so, perhaps this was the part of her that was the Dark Forest. This greedy, terrible hunger that wanted to have and own, press bruises into flesh and _mark_ her claim—that was not pure. But it was her. 

She wanted them both, and when she had a moment between hearing the complaints of her people and helping to reestablish things like infrastructure and taxes and diplomatic ties, she tried to imagine how she could convince them both to come to her bed.

* * *

She had been a year on the throne when Duke Hammond tried to overplay his influence. Duke Hammond had been King in everything but name while she was presumed dead. His lands had been the last refuge and bastion of her people: had been the only piece that refused to fall at Ravenna's feet. 

"I think" Duke Hammond said, "that we have made excellent progress. Most excellent, and we have our Queen to thank."

There were various murmurings of support, agreement from around the council, smiles sent her way. She wanted to be grateful, but all she could hear was the inevitable "but."

"However," the Duke continued, "I think that in the wake of such advances, we should turn our eyes to the Dark Forest. Too long have we lived in its shadow, in fear. It tears at the heart of our country, and under the old Queen it grew too strong. Now is the time to take action, my lords. Now we must face it, or forever be its victims." 

Snow White looked at Anna. Anna had _lived_ with the Forest, and it had offered her a kind of protection. It wasn't actively hateful, it enticed no one into its shadows. 

"And how do you propose we fight a forest?" Quert asked, eyebrows raised to his hairline. "Can't really take up arms against it." 

"Fire?" Baron Cauther suggested, sounding dubious.

"Fires don't light in there," Anna said. "Nothing catches flame, the trees will not be felled."

"We must do this for our people," Duke Hammond said. "We must prove to them that we are safe: that we will protect them, that we will not tolerate evil within our borders."

There was more to his speech, but she stopped listening, instead watching the faces of her privy council. Most seemed dubious, Quert and Olive were outright against it. Personally, Snow White couldn't see what the point of it was. She wondered if this was his way of setting her up—if she refused to do this would it undermine her? Make her seem as though she had some small part of Ravenna inside her? Would he start to whisper that she was perhaps not as pure as they had hoped? 

"A scout, perhaps. To assess the situation. If the forest does no harm, what sense is there in expending our energies on it?" Lord Alpervorth suggested.

The council agreed, and she stalled further by saying she needed time to consider.. 

That night she dreamed of startled, shocked eyes. Of blood pinging against her breastplate, of her hand growing wet as Ravenna bled. She dreamed that she stood and looked down to find a hole torn in her breastplate, through to her gaping chest wound: an empty cavity where her heart should have been. 

She woke and swallowed hard against the bile in her throat. 

She wondered if everyone dreamed of their dead like this. Not their dead: she didn't dream of her father, or her mother, but she dreamed of the one whose life she took. 

There would be no sleeping tonight, but the moon was full and high in the sky, so she pulled on a cloak and went to find Eric, because he didn't sleep when the moon was full. 

He was up on the walk, folded down and sharpening his axes. She sat down beside him.

"Yes, thank you, I was looking for company," he told her, glaring. She folded her arms over her chest and glared right back, and he sighed, irritable. "Can't sleep, then?"

"I saw her soul," she said. 

"Didn't think she'd have one," he grunted. She hadn't realized how he did that: picked up the thought. It was rare that he misunderstood or needed her to explain or provide context; when they fought it was because he was an idiot and she was right. 

"She did," Snow White said, wiping at her eyes and looking at him, furious with herself for crying. "But I think she'd forgotten, and remembered too late."

He gave her an unimpressed look, and she shrugged. He had no time for philosophy, though sometimes he would say things that made her wonder what he had planned to be before getting drafted to her father's army. 

"I never thanked you," she said. 

"No, never did," he agreed. "Which for?" 

"It was—it was your trick. That first one you taught me," she said. There had been other lessons, even after she was crowned. They were all as impromptu and unlooked for as that first one, when she had believed he was going to attack her, rape her, kill her, eat her. She knew now how to throw knives, take a blow, take a fall, incapacitate, and otherwise maim any attacker. The Duke and William and Anna all wanted to believe that the world was safe, but Snow White thought Eric was right: Ravenna was the chalice from which all evil spilled in concentration, but her death did not extinguish it from the world. 

"What did you think of Duke Hammond's plan to send men out to fight the evil left in the kingdom?" she asked, and watched his face twist. 

"Well, I've no doubt he'll be leading the charge, I'm sure," he sneered. 

"Shockingly, I don't think he's come forward to volunteer yet," she said, and he huffed a laugh. "I keep telling him I think we should focus on strengthening our walls and keeping our eyes to our people's prosperity instead of looking for trouble."

"I imagine he's still angry about that." 

"I'm not bothered one way or the other," she said, and he grinned at her, sudden and fond. 

"Oh, lass. I know you're not. Haven't ever really been particularly bothered by any of us." 

"They're still going to send a scout out," she said, and realized why she wanted to talk to him about it: not just because she valued his opinion, but because he was going to be the scout. Duke Hammond hated Eric, and the feeling was mutual. Eric wouldn't stand to let William exist in his father's shadow, and the Duke thought Eric was corrupting his only son. 

"I won't let them—" she started, twisting her hands together in her lap.

"Survived it twice now," he said. "Now I know the trick about just shouting at trolls, should be fine." 

She hit him, glaring. "It's not funny."

He looked at her, and for a moment they were too close. She thought, her heart beating wildly, that he would kiss her. But he didn't, just grinned a little and heaved himself to a stand, offering her his hand. 

She was right, ultimately. 

"I understand that you want to keep certain people safe," Duke Hammond told her, having requested a private audience. "But consider: we are still vulnerable."

"My father's kingdom was not considered vulnerable and fell to a single woman," Snow White said. "There is no present threat, no evil marches upon us, and I will not betray the faith my people have in me chasing shadows." 

"The people of this kingdom—"

"Have had enough violence. As have I," she said. "It is not up for further discussion."

He looked at her, his eyes hard and the corner of his mouth twisting into a sneer. "You are very much like your mother," he said, and it was not a compliment. If he was a lesser man he would have spat on the floor at her feet, but he was a King denied, and so he swept out, leaving her shaking with fury. 

Outside the magpies screamed their rage, and Greta sighed softly. "That was unpleasant," she said, and Snow White laughed at how much of an understatement that was. 

"He won't stop trying to control you," Greta said softly. "The only way for you to secure your throne is to marry and have an heir. The people love you now as their savior, but they will never touch you if you are a mother." 

It was true: every birth was celebrated, every babe who left their mother's womb and drew breath was a miracle. Ravenna's curse had run deep, and there were scarce few children who were younger than ten who weren't the Marsh Women's children.

"I can't be a mother," she said. "Not—not yet." 

She scarcely knew what it was to be a woman, a Queen, to no longer be a prisoner. She couldn't imagine being a wife, not yet. Not a wife, and not a mother.

William came to see her, and Greta smiled slyly and slipped away. 

"I'm going to scout out the Dark Forest," he said. 

"No," she said. "No, you're not."

"I would still do anything to keep you safe," he said, carefully, not meeting her eyes. "To keep you happy."

She stared at him, at the sorrow in him. She remembered pressing a kiss to his lips and wondered if she had wanted the Queen. She wondered if fairest blood was drawn to itself, if there was something narcissistic in her that recognized Ravenna.

Perhaps, but that couldn't be all, because she wanted still to lean up against him, take his face in her hands and kiss his worry, his regret away until he smiled.

"I know," she said gently. "William, I know, but this is not--" 

"He wants Eric to go on a campaign to the Dark Forest," William told her. "He—Lady Anna said that there were armies of men who were lost to it, and no one knows it better than Eric."

"There is nothing in that forest but death," Snow White said. 

"I think—he wants there to be one more," William said.

"He can't have him," Snow White said, and her voice was strong in the cold, thin air. "And neither can the forest." 

"I know," he said, and there was such a strength there, in those two words. William would go so that Eric could stay. 

"William," she said, wrapping her arms around herself. "Do you love him?"

He was silent, and it was—she was tired of the silences, so carefully crafted as though he thought he was saying volumes and all she heard was _silence_. She had been alone for so long, remembering how they had argued, and she wanted him _back_. But it was not to be, because he said, quiet, "Don't you?"

She said nothing, because of course she did. But she loved William, and they were hers and the parts of her that were dark and greedy wanted to shove him against the wall and bite at his lips, to show him that she was his _Queen_ and he belonged to her. He could have Eric, but William was _hers_ ; Eric could have William, but they—they belonged to her. 

He laughed, a choked, bitter sound, mistaking her silence, or misunderstanding it. "I leave in two days."

"Why would you do this?" she demanded, furious. "Why—" _wouldn't you fight your father, take what you want, stop apologizing?_

"Because I love you!" he interrupted, shouting it at her, flushed with anger. "Because I love you, and I would do anything to see you happy."

She stared at him, not understanding. "And you leaving—"

"I see how you look at him, and how he looks at you," he said. "It was his kiss that woke you, not mine."

"What?"

"I tried, I thought—I loved you, I've always loved you, and I thought I could break the spell, the way your mother used to tell us. True love's kiss, but it wasn't my kiss, Snow White. It was his, and he doesn't even _know_. I have him, but he loves you."

"William," she said, her blood singing in her veins, because yes, _yes_ he was hers.

"What?" he asked, his eyes bright and cheeks red, something terribly sad and preemptively defeated in his shoulders. Which was absurd, because William had done nothing but protect her fiercely, had done nothing that wasn't in service of her. Did he think so little of her to imagine she would not know that? Not remember him?

"How could I not love you?" she asked, and stepped forward to take his face in her hands and press her lips to his. 

It felt like flying.

* * *

She crashed to earth quite quickly. Castle gossip was both ruthlessly efficient and devastatingly accurate, and by tea the next day Greta was telling her that William and Eric had had a falling out. No one knew why, though Snow White would have been surprised if no one guessed. 

She went to find Eric, because William might dart around the truth, but Eric would tell her. She also wanted to know about that kiss: wanted to know why he was constantly denying himself if he had already proven his love to be true. 

She found him down in the city, which she was technically not supposed to travel into without guards. He looked at her from the roof he was thatching, and then slid down. 

"You're supposed to have guards." 

"Why didn't you tell me?" 

"Tell you what?"

"About the kiss?" 

"Would you—" he hissed, taking her arm and pulling her into the house. "Have you no sense at all?" he demanded. 

"William said his kiss didn't wake me, that it was yours," she said, and he stared at her like he couldn't believe this was what she wanted to talk about, a year later. "I don't understand—"

"He was in love with the idea of you," he said, gruff. "The memory of you. He didn't love _you_." 

"And you did? Do you?" she asked, her heart racing. _"Don't flatter yourself,"_ he'd said, and she hadn't—of both of them she was always less sure of Eric.

He laughed, that small huff of sound and amusement that was as cold as any of Ravenna's winters.

"Go to him, lass," he said. He seemed tired and old, and she was reminded of the way he had carried himself in the Forest, when they first met. "You'll be happy."

She walked slowly back to the castle, because arguing with him when she wasn't sure of her ground was an act of folly. He wouldn't be moved, not for anything, would kill himself trying not to give into her, even if it was something as simple as wanting to have fish instead of chicken for dinner. 

People stopped her, reaching out and holding her hands, kissing her fingers. She smiled at them all, at the color in their cheeks and the babies in their arms. They looked healthy, more as she remembered than the hollowed-out shell's they'd been in her immediate return. There was still much to do, but this, at least, was reassuring. 

It didn't solve any of her problems, but it did make them seem petty. Was she being selfish, now? Would her selfishness destroy the kingdom she was working so hard to rebuild? 

Perhaps she should marry William and be satisfied. Have children and let Duke Hammond have his way. But there was that small part of her, the blackest, deepest part of her that rebelled. That screamed defiance at the idea that any man should so own her, should take what was hers. 

She was Queen, and she was the land, and life, and the kingdom only rose so high because she carried it upon her shoulders; because her blood nourished it and pulsed through the ground. 

She would not yield. 

Still, it was well to realize that, and difficult to make stubborn hunters bow to her.

* * *

Eric moved into the house on the edge of the city and rode out daily, the wind told her. He was sad, the sea whispered. He was alone. 

Which was odd, because though she did not have Eric, surely William still did. But no, she came to realize, he did not. Eric hurt because he had been cast aside, and she wanted to tear at William for causing this hurt so needlessly. 

"Why aren't you with Eric anymore?" she asked William one night, his body beneath hers, his wrists captured in her hands. He gaped at her, struggling to focus, and she stilled, thinking to help. 

"Because…because I'm with you," he said, finally, fingers flexing. "Because I love you." 

"So you don't think it's possible to hold two loves in your heart?" she asked, and he stared at her.

"Can we—can you ask me again later?" he managed, sounding strangled. 

It was, perhaps, a reasonable request, so she waited until they were sated and he had napped to ask again. 

He swallowed, playing with a lock of her hair, and would not look at her as he lied: "No." 

 

She went down to Eric's the next day, and the house was locked. She frowned, trying the handle again. 

Overhead, her two magpies shrieked their alarm, and she looked up at them, her stomach sinking. 

Nothing knew where he was, but shen she came to the council meeting, frantic with worry (his horse was in its stable, the guards at the city gates had seen nothing), she had only to look at Duke Hammond's satisfied face to know what had happened. 

 

"He has Beith, Duir, and Coll with him," Muir told her, softly.

"That is not the comfort you think it is," she said, because of all of the dwarves, Beith, Duir and Coll were the least likely to use caution.

"Have faith, my Queen," Muir said, and she looked at him and couldn't find any within her. Quert smiled faintly at her, a pitying thing as though he knew her thoughts, and guided his father from the room.

"This is my fault," William said. She looked at him, and then said,

"No," she disagreed, and rested her head in her hands, tired and heartsick. "Not yours." 

He took her hands and knelt in front of her, his eyes bright with worry. "He's done it before, he'll survive it this time," he said. 

"I will never forgive your father," she said softly. "He will be going on a tour of the kingdom to assess our progress in my first year and a half on the throne."

"A reasonable and worthy charge," William agreed. 

His father disagreed when she bestowed the charge upon him in full view of the court, but he could not refuse. The entire court knew her displeasure, and the Duke had clearly not anticipated such a reaction. She was furious and as cold as her namesake in her rage. 

She slept uneasily, and spent the dark hours of the night staring west, towards the Dark Forest, and willed it to leave him alive. _He is mine,_ she thought, _and you cannot have his life._

She was surprised by how keenly Eric was missed. She knew he spent hours at the castle, that he had had his own rooms and had done things with his time unrelated to her, but she had always assumed those things fell within the realm of "bedding William." That was only partially true. 

The young men of the court, her knights, her soldiers, the ones who would become stewards of her land when their fathers finally passed on—they were incensed. Eric was twice a veteran, had survived battle with the Raven Queen twice, and it made him a legend. They bought him drinks, begged for lessons, and got into trouble with him. He was gone, now, and all they knew was her rage and William's fury. If Duke Hammond had not bowed to her will, she did not know what would have been done to him. 

And William was _furious_. "How could he leave us?" he demanded. "How could he—"

"He's a fool," she said. Eric might love her, as much as he could love anyone, but he also loved William. It was a simple truth, nothing terrible in it. "He has eyes but he doesn't use them." 

Summer became autumn, and she had had enough. 

"I feel like a ride," she told William. "Lend me your clothes."

She pulled back her hair and buckled on a sword, putting a knife in her boot. They walked the horses out of the stables, and the guards, whose names she should have known but didn't, pressed their lips together. 

"You cannot risk yourself," William said as they mounted up. "I mean it, Snow White."

"I've survived it once," she argued, even though she knew that most of that had to do with Eric. Still, she was—she had defeated Ravenna, brought a kingdom from the brink of ruin, and as the kingdom's strengthened so did she. "Keep close and you might live." 

"I'd forgotten this side of you," he muttered. "I didn't care to remember it." 

"You can turn away," she snapped, and he glared at her. 

"Not on your life." 

She dismounted, and they tied the horses a mile away, finishing their journey on foot. She paused on the edge of the forest: it looked unchanged, just as terrible and wicked as she remembered. Still, as she walked forward, the path seemed to clear for her, as though the forest itself was recoiling.

"What," William said flatly, and she glanced at him over her shoulder before following his gaze to where Eric was walking towards them. He was dirty, more like how he had appeared when they first met, but he was laughing at something Beith was saying to him. 

It was Beith who noticed them, the dwarf smacking Erick's thigh with the flat of his blade. 

"Damnit, Beith, what is your—" Eric started, and then saw them. She wanted to scream at him, at Beith, but mostly at Eric. 

"Do you realize you're scarin' the forest?" he asked her. 

"You ass," William snarled, taking Eric's face in his hands and kissing him hard before pulling back to punch him in the face. Snow White flinched, reaching out as Eric fell to the ground, but she didn't intervene. He deserved this for being such an idiot and causing them such worry.

Beith, Duir, and Coll took one look between the three of them and had decided that they were going to head back to the castle, thank you. 

Eric sat up, pinching his nose to stop the bleeding, and William began shouting at him "You left us! You left us and you didn't care whether—you didn't care what it would do to us. To either of us."

"I was getting out of the way!" Eric yelled back, and then rolled his eyes as though he couldn't bear to have voiced the words, or was perhaps disgusted with them both for not taking advantage of his absence. 

"Did you ever consider," William snarled, "that we _wanted_ you?"

Eric scoffed, looking between them, and then hesitated. "What…" he started, and then clearly didn't know how to finish the sentence.

The forest chose that moment to react to their hostility by having an earthquake, roots and vines speeding towards them, the poisoned earth shrieking. 

"Enough!" she shouted, and her voice echoed in the sudden silence. William was eyeing the forest and her warily, but Eric was striding towards her.

"And you," Eric said, stopping in front of her. "You think this way as well? You think this idiocy a good idea?"

"I do," she said, swallowing. Sometimes he made her feel very young, and she lifted her chin against the feeling. 

He looked between them both, like he couldn't believe what was happening. 

"You don't have to decide now," she said softly. "We can—we can wait. Just—don't leave again. Promise me you won't." 

"You cause me more grief," he started, and she felt her stomach plummet, and then his lips were on hers. His beard was rough against her skin, his hands big on her cheeks, and she fisted her hands in his coat, holding on tightly, kissing him back as hard as she could. She was only going to get one opportunity to convince him, she knew. 

"Alright, lass. Alright," he murmured, pressing their foreheads together. She laughed with pure joy, and looked at William, who was beaming just as foolishly as she was certain she was. "You're both impossible," Eric muttered, and pulled William towards them.

"Yes," William agreed, coming easily. "Though perhaps not here. That tree has eyeballs."

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to gus for the very-last-minute beta!
> 
> * * *
> 
>  **Blanket Permission:** go ahead and translate, make podfic, rework the fic, or do whatever other transformative work you can think of. If the work is hosted on another site, drop me a comment or email and I'll put a link in the story notes!
> 
> [twitter:](https://twitter.com/waldorph) for unfiltered me || [tumblr:](http://waldorph.tumblr.com/) less about me, more about the pretty gifsets and art


End file.
